Blurt Fall 2009 : Page 70
EvEryonE lovEs a “Horatio algEr” story, and it’s hard to find one tastier than sasha grey’s (born Marina ann Hantzis). sasha’s official story says that at 17, the underprivileged sacramento girl decided she was going to make her way into adult film, “researched” the industry for seven months, got an agent at 18, moved to l.a. and within two weeks was appearing in a John stagliano orgy scene. she was also media-savvy from jump street, getting herself an excellent, Dave gardetta- penned Los Angeles magazine profile and a tyra Banks talk show segment before long. Her work ethic (ahem) has been as pronounced as her marketing prow- ess, which along with her uncommonly horny-girl-next-door-you-might- actually-nail looks have set her apart in that world. But of course what’s really set her apart is being the first adult actress (unless you count Joan Crawford) to star in an academy award-winning director’s film (steven soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience), which is at least one reason why you’re reading this. Why i’m writing it is another story: i first met sasha in March at her vegas nightclub-hosted 21st birthday party, which i crashed in order to reacquaint myself with smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan (that’s another story), who has become one of grey’s BFFs of late. But i was also familiar with sasha through her Myspace page (where Corgan and soderbergh also contacted her), which brimmed with so many unpredictable music and movie favorites that i found myself in disbelief i could have so much in common with a barely legal porn star. Faust, Eno, Bloc Party, “old Elton John,” DJ Quik, Mingus, arab strap, Durutti Column, shostakovich, godard, lars von trier, Breillat, Monte Hellman, Bertolucci, vargas… louis Malle?!? literary references you’d expect from a grad student, but grey got no farther than some junior college—one would expect salinger to be as deep as she dug. serendipity truly reared its head for the Blurt photo shoot as well: our photographer talked her friend Devendra Banhart into loaning us his silver lake bungalow for the day. Few might have expected Devendra— who was working on his ink art all afternoon—and sasha to hit it off, but of course they turned out to be kindred spirits. some might not realize the significance of that, though. During the shoot, Carson Daly is also scheduled to interview grey for his tv show, and he breezes into the house somewhat obliviously before revealing, during their camera chat, quite an intimate knowledge of sasha’s oeuvre. thankfully, that allows me to avoid all the obvious questions, though i am happy to report from my eavesdropping a list of what the seemingly no-holds-barred girl will say no to on camera (fingers or ejaculation inside, slapping her breasts, scatology—now you know). We all may be giving sasha grey too much credit—she may well be nothing more than the novelty of the moment for the media to seize upon. after all, her performance in TGE is credible, but she isn’t showing the sort of dramatic instincts that Kirsten Dunst, scarlett Johansson or even Heather graham (yes, even Heather graham) displayed at her age. then again, none of them showed the depth or ambition that grey has. not to mention, with most porn stars you’d be hard pressed to have a discussion about anything beyond tanning salons and Blackberrys. 70 BLURT fall 2009 You’re doing an awful lot of press these days. What’s too personal for you to talk about? you know, i’m a pretty open and honest person. i just find it difficult to talk about things without people trying to twist my words, and i have to censor myself sometimes. aside from that, i would say my family. Just because i don’t want my mom to get fired from her job; i’ve had issues with people stalking; i don’t want that to happen to my sister or brother. My sister and my brother fully support what i do, but i’m not going to say, ‘these are their names.’ there’s no reason you should want to know their names. In TGE, one of the central themes is your character’s relationship and the difficulty in her having a relationship while being an escort. As an adult performer, have you experienced that? Is it a fait accompli when you have a job that requires you being intimate with others? luckily i’ve been able to find somebody that does support me in what i do. Christine/Chelsea didn’t have that. Her boyfriend pretends to support her, but he just wants her to quit. i think the notion of ownership in relation- ships is a joke. But outside of the context of personal relationships, do i find my life to sometimes be difficult because of what i do? yeah, of course. Because people come with a pre-conceived notion of who you are and what you are. say i was a regular actress who’d never been in porn talking about sex—people would say, ‘oh, that’s really interesting and cool because now we can talk about that,’ or it would be the same old thing of, ‘that’s bad; you can’t talk about that.’ People aren’t used to a young woman being so confident and sure of herself, without thinking they’ve come from abuse or they’re being abused or being forced into doing what they’re doing. You’ve been very vocal about the adult world being unified, and yet you don’t really seem to be very active in the adult community overall. yeah, that’s fair to say. if i had millions of dollars, i would try and unify the business right now. i think it does come down to money, and it comes down to politics. you’re not going to change these people who are set in their ways and comfortable making a few million dollars a year. it’s an old e
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